I feel like decreasing the price would really get more to use this service. I’m not a professional obviously but it does seem overpriced for minimal value. On the other hand you don’t want to add too much features since then you’re just stripping the site of features all users should have(I really think private rooms should be allowed for all..)

I don’t know if you can change anything at this point but a cheaper price may exponentially increase subscribers. There isn’t nearly enough added bonus to warrant 30 dollars in my personal opinion.

Whatever happened to mods getting no extra benefits other than modding abilities?

I’m fairly sure that stopped happening a long time ago when Jim bought all the mods Plants vs. Zombies. Also, all the mods getting to play Remnants of Skystone a few days before it was put into level-based beta.

Whatever happened to mods getting no extra benefits other than modding abilities?

Moderators do a lot of really important work for us, all for free! We ask a lot of mods, and don’t often get to give them much in return. Just ask them, they’ll corroborate. Beyond that, in order to be effective and helpful in chat, it’s important for them to be able to know how all our features work.

Yeah, we don’t pay them for all the stuff they do. We do gift them things every now and again. Because, well, they’re pretty much our slaves. Plus, they’re supposed to be helpful liaisons to the community about all things Kong. If they’re missing something, they can’t be that helpful about that particular thing. :S

Well Kongregate, I am very disappointed at this decision. Exchanging features for money is immoral, and only a company run jointly by Satan and Hitler would have that idea.

That’s why every day I walk down to the local sushi bar, order $100 worth of sushi, and I don’t pay because paying is wrong and immoral and evil, and if you have ever gained money or used money, you are going to hell.

I highly doubt anything labelled on the front page is a “benefit” in that sense that you could pay for it if you wish, but I’m being very technical about this in terms of word choice.

The “gifts” were what they are called: gifts.

I would deem a benefit (definition: gain or profit from something) as something only moderators have that no other user does and cannot reasonably accomplish, but under that definition one could become a moderator anyway.

Of course, semantics. I will now slink back into my deep dark hole of despair.

I’m not sure how you know that we’re doing perfectly well, and that we don’t need to do this to help us a great deal. :S GameStop has given us a lot, it’s true. But the great flexibility and independence they’ve given us is dependent on us being a lucrative purchase for them. In order to keep Kong as much the same as possible, this is something that’s pretty necessary. And to be honest, I personally don’t believe this will change a “normal” Kong user’s experience one bit. You don’t have to believe me, but there it is. :)

I dislike this because it shows that Kong has taken a step towards themselves, not the community. It’s a greed-fueled act, and I feel sad seeing Kong make such a move.

Courtesy of Emily – Kong gots to pay the bills, yo. People have been requesting an ad-free service for a years. We put in a few additional features to make it more compelling but thought very hard on what they should be so that they could be positive for the subscribers without in any way negatively impacting non-subscribers. For example we could have done double points earning on badges, and a lot of people would have bought that, but we didn’t want to put subscribers at a disadvantage.

As the community grows, we want to bring you guys more awesome features – this isn’t for us, it’s for you guys. We want to keep having awesome contest prizes (and keep the site running!) :D

Well, first thing’s first. I believe apologies are in order, I misrepresented myself. I feel like it’s a step in a bad direction. If things follow this trend, and the K+ users continue to get more stuff, then I could see it getting bad. I mean, this one in itself doesn’t seem too bad, but it feels like it could really just be the start of something rather negative. Not that it is, but if the gap between them continues to grow, then it could just kinda start to suck.

And about Kong being well off, I recall my wording of it meaning more that it was my understanding that Kongregate was well off, not that they absolutely, surely were. I do admit though, that I kinda didn’t really put to much emphasis on that though. it was meant to be more of a hypothetical, like " if Kong was doing well before, and this wasn’t needed, then it’s greed", but I see how my own rather poor word choice in parts of my posts in this thread didn’t represent what I meant. I just meant that I thought I heard Kong was well off (I believe I recall reading that somewhere on the forums somewhat recently), and I was basing it on that if it was true, and I see that I didn’t really show that properly.

And as it turns out, I was apparently incorrect about that, which wouldn’t have been as big a deal had I worded my post better. But I neglected that, and I seemed to have just dug myself deeper.

@Z, I really appreciate that though. I think that the main thing about this I dislike(d) was that I feel like this could lead to normal users being at a disadvantage, but it’s reassuring to see that isn’t the case. I just don’t want the normal users to be put down in any way because of this, and it kinda feels like giving certain content (in this case, just the backgrounds, not too big a deal, but bigger stuff being limited to K+ users would be a downer) could count as putting down normal users in certain situations.

So to sum it up, I’m sorry that I misrepresented what I was trying to say, and I’m sorry for going off of flimsy evidence. After learning how things were from the staffers, it really does invalidate most of the stuff I posted in this thread previously. Sorry for being so hostile about this, and as long as you guys approach this K+ thing right (you guys seem to be doing well right now, I was merely worried for things going downhill with this later), then it could actually be really cool.

@Sellyme

I’m going to patronise you all I want when you somehow seem to believe you know Kong’s financial state better than they do.

I was talking to Zshadow (in a way I admit was unnecessarily rude), but I guess your reply is still valid. In short, as I said earlier in this post, I was basically going off of flimsy evidence (which I should have done a better job with), and I didn’t mean to say that that was HOW it was, merely how If I was correct about how it as based off my evidence, then that’s how things were. But the evidence was wrong, and I worded it poorly, so it kinda got screwed up.

Sorry for my disruption and whatnot with all this. Honestly, I was just worried that this could lead to bad things happening, but I believe the staffers know their stuff. I guess everything should go well, seems like things should be good for everyone with this. Sorry for getting so worked up about it.

Also, does this mean developers won’t be paid for views from kong+ users?

Nope, they still will. It just comes out of the subscription fee instead of the ad revenue. :)

This sounds like kongregate will lose much money out of this.

And what of the second question?

Not really. Only EXTREMELY heavy site users will generate more than $30 of ad revenue each year. Remember, this is only on game pages, not the forums and so on.

EDIT:

I was talking to Zshadow (in a way I admit was unnecessarily rude), but I guess your reply is still valid. In short, as I said earlier in this post, I was basically going off of flimsy evidence (which I should have done a better job with), and I didn’t mean to say that that was HOW it was, merely how If I was correct about how it as based off my evidence, then that’s how things were. But the evidence was wrong, and I worded it poorly, so it kinda got screwed up.

Sorry for my disruption and whatnot with all this. Honestly, I was just worried that this could lead to bad things happening, but I believe the staffers know their stuff. I guess everything should go well, seems like things should be good for everyone with this. Sorry for getting so worked up about it.

Yeah, we don’t pay them for all the stuff they do. We do gift them things every now and again. Because, well, they’re pretty much our slaves. Plus, they’re supposed to be helpful liaisons to the community about all things Kong. If they’re missing something, they can’t be that helpful about that particular thing. :S

Fair enough.

But what incentive (other than a bit of kreds and a few aesthetic things like the medal, chat icon, and account background thing) does one have to buy this when they can use adblock to block ads and tinychat to accomplish the premium chat benefits? You know, other than to support Kongregate.

But what incentive (other than a bit of kreds and a few aesthetic things like the medal, chat icon, and account background thing) does one have to buy this when they can use adblock to block ads and tinychat to accomplish the premium chat benefits? You know, other than to support Kongregate.

Absolutely nothing, and I think that’s the point.

Similar to how you don’t need to pay for Kreds and can get them for free through offers, but paying for them is usually less of a hassle.

I highly doubt anything labelled on the front page is a “benefit” in that sense that you could pay for it if you wish, but I’m being very technical about this in terms of word choice.

The “gifts” were what they are called: gifts.

I would deem a benefit (definition: gain or profit from something) as something only moderators have that no other user does and cannot reasonably accomplish, but under that definition one could become a moderator anyway.

Of course, semantics. I will now slink back into my deep dark hole of despair.

This is an independent statement non-representative of anything.

So if mods got 100 kreds a day everything would be cool because normal members could either purchase kreds or become a mod themselves.

I highly doubt anything labelled on the front page is a “benefit” in that sense that you could pay for it if you wish, but I’m being very technical about this in terms of word choice.

The “gifts” were what they are called: gifts.

I would deem a benefit (definition: gain or profit from something) as something only moderators have that no other user does and cannot reasonably accomplish, but under that definition one could become a moderator anyway.

Of course, semantics. I will now slink back into my deep dark hole of despair.

This is an independent statement non-representative of anything.

So if mods got 100 kreds a day everything would be cool because normal members could either purchase kreds or become a mod themselves.

Right.

Yes, yes it would. It would just make moderatorship a job, a paid position. Unless you’re saying that having a job is immoral?

Well Kongregate, I am very disappointed at this decision. Exchanging features for money is immoral, and only a company run jointly by Satan and Hitler would have that idea.

That’s why every day I walk down to the local sushi bar, order $100 worth of sushi, and I don’t pay because paying is wrong and immoral and evil, and if you have ever gained money or used money, you are going to hell.

@Bandito No worries! And you’re absolutely right. Just like any new thing, it could be bad. But this is the part where I hope you’ll be able to trust that we don’t want it to be bad, either. Our goal was to offer features that were cool, but definitely not necessary to have a really good Kongregate experience. In fact, the features you have now are the same as the ones you’ve had, and we’re going to continue to build great things for everybody. We might add more extra-cool stuff into Kong Plus in the future, but we would never leave non-paying users with a Kongregate that was anything less than a great place to be. Granted, you have to trust what I’m saying, which can be hard. But I don’t wanna pay for stuff, either. :P So I’m determined to keep free Kong cool, and I know the people in charge are, too.

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